Review: The Enigma of Room 622 by Joel Dicker

Synopsis: "One night in December, a corpse is found in Room 622 of the Hotel Verbier, a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps. A police investigation begins without definite end, and public interest wanes with the passage of time.Years later, the writer Joel Dicker, Switzerland's most famous literary ingenue, arrives at that same hotel to recover from a bad breakup, mourn the death of his longtime publisher, and begin his next novel. Little does Joel know that his expertise in the art of the thriller will come in handy when he finds himself investigating the crime. He'll need a Watson, of course: in this case, that would be Scarlett, the beautiful guest and aspiring novelist from the next room, who joins in the search while he tries to solve another puzzle: the plot of his next book.

Meanwhile, in the wake of his father's passing, Macaire Ebezner is set to take over as president of the largest private bank in Switzerland. The succession captivates the news media, and the future looks bright, until it doesn't. The bank's board, including a certain Lev Levovitch-Geneva's very own Jay Gatsby-have other plans, and Macaire's race to the top soon becomes a race against time... A matryoshka doll of a mystery built with the precision of a Swiss watch. Joel Dicker presents a diabolically addictive thriller where a love triangle, a power struggle, shocking betrayals and dangerous envy play out against the backdrop of a not so quiet Switzerland, where the truth twists and turns into something no reader will see coming. A European phenomenon, Dicker's latest page-turner is his most personal novel yet"

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Seriously lost in translation.

Half the time I did not know if I was coming or going - were we in the past, present or future - at times we went back a few years, other times over a decade. There was not real point in time by which to securely anchor the story.

The character of Scarlet just grated on me to the point where I could quite easily have murdered her myself. Sure our author - himself the main character - needed some foil by which to begin his investigation, but this women's constant badgering of Dicker to investigate seemed redundant, especially when the mystery of Room 622 was already on Dicker's radar.  His Watson in this instance was superfluous.

The storyline, whilst promising, was highly convoluted, disjointed and at times I struggled to follow it at all. The narrative alternated between first and third person, Dicker's "story" and the mystery including a rather tiresome and confusing back story.  I felt the whole thing was some hodge-podge charade that at nearly 600 pages, was about 400 pages too long. The whole story within a story was done without any finesse or consideration for the reader.

Sorry to say not a fan of this one.